POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Annuities, [Non-]lying women, and NJ pols, oh my!

Three stories that caught my eye recently, and reusing/editing comments I made at those places

Substituting Govt annuities for your 401k

Summary of article: proposal for forcing people to buy annuities from their 401ks for retirement income.

My comment: I’m not pro-government control of retirement accounts, but it’s true that a lot of people would be better off with payout [not deferred] =fixed= [not variable] annuities. Most of the annuity bad behavior has been in variable deferred annuities, where one does pay very high fees for possible downside protection against account value dropping below a certain amount, and most are using as a tax-advantaged investment vehicle, not a source of income [indeed, people rarely annuitize with these things - just take a lump sum out at the end]

The problem is that one has to convert a big lump of money into an income stream in retirement, and that’s not necessarily cheap, either.

I used to work for TIAA-CREF as an actuary working on their retirement annuities. TIAA has been around for eighty years, I believe, and their customers on the whole do annuitize at least some of their retirement savings. TIAA is a very stable company, and never does anything crazy [indeed, they dumped all their CDO stuff when they realized there was something dodgy about that]. That is the kind of company you want to buy an income [i.e. payout] annuity from; alas, their best products aren’t available to the general public. I have most of my retirement savings with TIAA right now.

All that said, it would be best for the government to stay out of this. All I could think of when I heard about this was “How are they going to screw this one up”. Given they can't really handle Social Security or Medicare, I don't see them doing this well, either.

And that was even before figuring in the Obama admin's financial follies, no matter how much it's Bush's fault. I'm not looking forward to not having annuity payments in sixty years and some one of my fellow decrepit Gen Xers whining "It's all Bush's fault!"

Or maybe, if we're lucky, the whine will be "It's all Scott Brown's fault! And Martha Coakley! She sucked!"

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Clay Shirky and those gosh-darn non-jerky females

Summary of post: Why can't a woman be more like a [self-promoting, lying] man?

My comment: There are plenty of female liars/cons [little or big].

I did something similar to Clay’s story - I was doing volunteer work at a hospital where they had us folding brochures by hand [yay]. I heard one of the secretaries complaining about having to make an org chart in Aldus Pagemaker [on a Mac... this was in 1990, btw], and I piped up and said I could do it. She asked me if I knew Pagemaker, and I said yes [it was the first I had ever heard of it... but come on, it was on a Mac. Even then, they were easy to deal with.] In any case, the next day I was designing the brochures other volunteers would be folding. It was pretty cool.

Maybe the difference is when women lie generally we’re better at it. So you never even realize we’re lying… heh.

To add to my comment from Clay's site, I don't really believe that last comment. I mean, look at the various female politicians - they lie no better than the guys do.

Also, there are guys who also don't self-promote, and they sit around bitching about the jerks who get ahead with those tactics. I think part of the problem is just schooling in general -- the goody-good kids think that following the stated rules and marking off the checklist is what gets success -- after all, that's what the teachers told them.

But the main thing they may not have realized is how little people above you are paying attention to what you do [or other people you're trying to influence]. This has nothing to do with lying, but everything to do with realizing you have to make explicit plays for attention from people with more power than you have. You can't just build it, and expect them to come.

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NJ pols and their shenanigans with the public finances

Summary: Ornery NJ actuary John Bury makes YouTube vid showing what Union County, NJ pols have been up to with the budget. Shock - stuff they weren't supposed to be doing. One commenter on thread says "But they arrogantly continued the charade knowing the public can't do anything about their lies and scam." and yadda yadda yadda something about the system sucking.

My reply:
Well, there is something NJ residents can do about it.

First, you have to elect somebody else to these positions, and make it explicit that's why the previous bums got voted out.

Now, politicians of any stripe are likely to stray, so you gotta keep them honest by keep throwing them out when they behave in these traditional ways.

Yes, you can change the system, but if it's a matter of which group of politicians is screwing with you, and you don't pay attention to who you're voting for [and don't vote out people who are screwing you] it doesn't matter what system you'll set up.

In any case, this New Yorker is keeping an eye on Massachusett[e]s today, with hope for a change in my own state as well. I was a little surprised here in Westchester County when Spano [Dem] was thrown out in favor of Astorino [Repub... and used to work in =Catholic= radio!! NO WAI!]